Strategic Partnership Enables Direct Purchases Within Chat Interface
[Perplexity AI](https://www.perplexity.ai) announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with payments giant PayPal to enable direct purchases within its chat interface, marking a significant advancement in the emerging field of agentic commerce.[1]
This groundbreaking collaboration will allow users to seamlessly check out using PayPal or Venmo when they ask [Perplexity Pro](https://www.perplexity.ai/pro) to find products, book travel, or purchase tickets. The feature is expected to launch this summer in the United States.[1][2]
Streamlining the Shopping Experience
The partnership transforms the entire purchasing process by handling payments, shipping, and tracking behind the scenes through PayPal's account linking. This innovation promises to "eliminate the need for passwords" and "streamline the experience to a single user query or click," according to Perplexity.[1]
"Perplexity wants to have accurate, trustworthy answers wherever people are making decisions. PayPal is a natural partner because we share a vision for how important trust is in the age of AI," said Aravind Srinivas, Cofounder and CEO of Perplexity.[2]
Alex Chriss, President and CEO of PayPal, emphasized the transformative nature of this collaboration: "This partnership unlocks new possibilities, where conversations now drive commerce. We're making it easy and secure to shop right in the chat when inspiration strikes. It's a powerful step in making conversational commerce a reality."[2]
Expanding Reach and Capabilities
The partnership will significantly expand Perplexity's commerce tools to PayPal's extensive network of more than 430 million active accounts across nearly 200 markets worldwide.[1]
Perplexity, which provides information by searching the internet similar to [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com) and Google's [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com), is backed by prominent investors including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, AI leader Nvidia, and Japan's SoftBank Group.[1]
Industry Trend Toward AI-Powered Commerce
This collaboration represents an early example of what the emerging agentic commerce business model will look like in the future. PayPal is not alone in recognizing this opportunity, as other financial services companies like Visa and Mastercard have also recently launched new tools to integrate artificial intelligence into online purchases.[2]
Visa's Intelligent Commerce platform has partnered with Anthropic, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Samsung, and Perplexity to accept tokenized payments, while Mastercard's new Agent Pay will integrate Microsoft's AI tools, including Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio.[2]
Financial Growth
The announcement comes amid reports that Perplexity is in advanced talks to raise $500 million in a funding round that would value the company at $14 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.[1]
As AI-powered search and commerce continue to evolve, this partnership between Perplexity and PayPal represents a significant step forward in how consumers will discover and purchase products and services in the near future.
